Tied
by Empathist
Summary: Fluffy one-shot set in January 2013.


Brendan liked seeing the bruises. When he couldn't see them, he liked knowing that they were there, under the T-shirts, under the soft cotton of the new tracksuits.

These bruises, these days, were a different kind of secret from the marks Steven used to bear. These days they were a proof of intimacy. Last night's prints from fingers and thumbs vivid on his thighs, overlaying the smudgier marks from the night before. The clear imprint of teeth along his collar bone, paid back by way of Steven's finger nails scoring across Brendan's back. A mottled blur on the smooth brown slope of his shoulder, sucked into the skin in a ten minute lovebite as they lay like spoons, Brendan's cock still buried in him long after they'd both come. That kind of thing.

He'd watched him getting dressed this morning. It was still dark; Steven must have thought Brendan was still asleep, so he hadn't put the light on, but Brendan had felt him leave the bed and heard him go out to the bathroom and then come quietly back into the room, so he stretched out an arm to switch on the bedside lamp.

"Thought you'd want a lie-in," Steven said.

"Just admiring the scenery."

"Pervert."

Brendan watched as Steven slipped off his dressing gown and pulled on a pair of boxers, and didn't speak again until his cock disappeared inside them. Then he asked, "What time is it?"

"Only early. Time to get the kids up though. Them mums at the nursery give me a right dirty look if Lucas is late."

"They probably fancy you, is all."

"You reckon? Might try me luck then."

"Long as it's just the mums."

"I dunno, there's one of the dads, right, he's – "

"Fuck that." Brendan knew Steven was joking, but still he felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

"Jealous?" He looked smug.

"Funny guy."

Steven finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it into his chinos.

"You gonna stay in here til we've gone?" he asked.

"Yes." Brendan tried to keep the snap out of his voice.

It was what they'd agreed. He had spent almost every night at Steven's place since Seamus found out at Christmas that he was gay, and hadn't been home to Cheryl's at all in the few days since he'd run Joel out of town. There was no longer the safety in numbers that Joel's presence in the house – not that Brendan had realised it when he was there – had brought, and this crummy flat felt more like home with each day that passed. But still, they hadn't yet told Leah and Lucas that Brendan was their dad's boyfriend now, and they tried not to let the kids see him coming out of their dad's bedroom in the mornings. Brendan was sure Leah had figured it out, smart cookie as she was, but Steven was conscious of how recently it was that Douglas was meant to be their daddy, and didn't want to add more confusion to their lives just yet. And there was the added issue of Amy, and how she would react if the children let it slip.

Brendan hated it, hated feeling as if he was Steven's dirty little secret, but he saw the irony and let the subject lie.

"Ta." Steven bent to kiss Brendan lightly on the lips. "You coming round tonight?"

"You want me to?"

"Er... Yeah." He grinned. "You working late?"

"Probably."

"Get home earlier if you can though."

Steven escaped out of the room before Brendan could grab him.

Brendan got up and put on the dressing gown that Steven had discarded. He was wide awake now, but he was stuck in here while Steven did the pre-school routine, getting the kids up and washed and dressed and fed, teeth and hair brushed, the right books and toys gathered and packed, and finally out of the house. It would take a while.

He had a few belongings here now, which he'd gradually moved over from Cheryl's place. Clothes and so on. Steven had told him he was going to clear a drawer for him, and had got half way through doing so yesterday before Brendan walked into the bedroom and saw him bent over as he scrabbled about, and one thing had led to another... so Brendan's stuff was still in piles. Maybe that was what he could spend this time doing, while he waited for them to leave for school.

He pulled open the drawer that Steven had been clearing. There wasn't much left in there, and he found room for some of it – odd socks, boxers that Brendan had never seen him wearing, a couple of ties – in other drawers. What was left was the kind of crap that gets shoved away because there's nowhere else to put it, and gets left there unused and accumulating: an old phone charger, a watch with a dead battery, some hair clips that must have been Amy's, a belt with a broken buckle, a couple of DVDs without their cases.

Brendan sat back on the bed. _Bad Cop, Bad Cop_, it said on one of the DVDs. The other one said, _Bareback Mountain_.

"Steven Hay," he said, "You dirty little fucker."

Steven's laptop was in the bedroom. Brendan switched it on and waited, but when it came to life it wanted a user name and a password. Fuck.

He typed in _ste_ for the user, and then stared at the screen, thinking. How many goes did these things give you to get the password right? Three, he guessed. Okay then. It would be a short word that was easy for Steven to spell, and meant something to him: _leah_. He pressed enter, but a message came up saying it was wrong, so he tried _lucas _and got the same message again.

One more go.

How long had Steven had this computer? A while, he guessed; he'd have had it while Amy was around, most likely, and definitely while he was with Douglas, so there was no point trying_ brendan_ or _brady_ as a password, because Steven had hated him then, hadn't he? Or at least, he wouldn't have wanted to think about him every time he turned on his fucking laptop. And yet... Brendan typed in _chezchez_, hesitated, then pressed enter.

He was in.

He slid _Bareback Mountain _in, and clicked play.

There wasn't a horse in sight.

:::::::

The flat was dark when Brendan let himself in. He hadn't been able to get away from work early in the end, so it was past midnight.

There was a sandwich on a plate on the kitchen counter, covered in clingwrap. He ate it, drank a couple of glasses of water, had a quick bath then went quietly into the bedroom, towel around his waist, his clothes bundled in his arms.

"Alright?" Steven's voice was drowsy.

"Did I wake you?"

"Heard the water in the pipes."

"Sorry." Brendan dropped his clothes onto the chair and his towel onto the floor, and got into bed.

Steven rolled onto his side to face him and they kissed. Brendan pulled him tightly against his body, and squeezed his pyjama-clad arse.

"D'you know what it is?" Steven asked between kisses.

"What what is?"

"Today. It's our anniversary."

"Hm?" Brendan racked his brain. It was August when they met. October was their first kiss, first blowjob, first fuck, first... a lot of firsts. December when they stood on a bridge between their old life and their new one. What the fuck was January?

"_One_ of our anniversaries," Steven clarified as if he had read Brendan's mind. "It was the first time I... Two years ago, it was the first time I said I love you. Remember?"

Remember? Brendan couldn't forget. He remembered the fear he felt hearing those words. Not that he hadn't heard them before: he'd heard them from Macca not two months earlier; from Vincent before him. From Eileen, even, before it all went sour. None of those had made him feel what he felt when Steven said them. Fear of what the boy would do when he rejected him, the trouble he might cause. Astonishment that Steven could love a man who did nothing to deserve to be loved. A paralysing sadness and sickness that something so wrong and so impossible seemed, for just one moment before it burnt away, right and possible.

"Dumped you five seconds later, didn't I." The gruffness of his voice wouldn't fool Steven.

"I know, but it's still, you know. First time. It's important, innit." He smoothed Brendan's moustache with his thumb. "Took you long enough to say it back though."

The only lover Brendan had said those words to before – _I love you_ – was Eileen, but when he'd said it to her it was because that was what normal people said. Normal people said to their girls or their wives, _I love you_, and they touched their breasts and they felt for the dark warm wetness hidden between their legs, and they didn't recoil from their startling smells and textures, and they impregnated them. So that's what Brendan had done to Eileen, and it had made him feel less normal than ever. Saying _I love you_ to Steven hadn't felt normal either, but it had felt true.

It was puzzling to remember now how hard it was to say those words to this man, when now it was so easy.

"We should celebrate," Brendan said.

"Like what?"

Brendan pulled Steven's head towards him and breathed into his ear, "Fancy a movie?"

"What?"

"How about _Bareback Mountain_?"

Steven pulled away from him.

"What you on about?"

"Found it in your private collection."

"What you even doing, going through my stuff?"

"I was clearing a drawer. You said I could, Steven."

"Yeah, but I never... It's not even a..."

Brendan sat up and turned on the lamp, and looked down at Steven.

"Are you blushing, Mr Hay?"

"Shut up. Them films are... I'm not even interested, me."

"No. No, course not... Couldn't help noticing, one of them fellas has got – "

"You watched it?"

"Yeah. Fuck all else to do when you had me wait in here out of the way of your kids, so."

"What, so you watched it on me laptop? How did you know me password? You been spying on me, Brendan?"

"Jesus, you wanna shout the house down? You musta just not logged off last time or something, okay?" Not the worst lie he had ever told.

"Oh, right. Right, but, so you just thought you could – "

"He had a moustache."

"What?"

"One of the fellas in that masterpiece of cinema. Moustache. So I'm thinking, all that time you hated me, you couldn't stand the sight of me, and you were going from the gym bunny to a big fat nothing to the Yank – all that time, your porno of choice was – "

"Shut up. Shut up, Brendan, right."

"The other cowboy was alright, wasn't he? Bit skinny, but..."

"Did you fancy him?"

Brendan leaned over and spoke into Steven's mouth.

"Maybe. When he was tied up in the bunkhouse..." He took Steven's bottom lip between his teeth, and Steven grabbed his head and kissed him. "...The way he _wriggled_, it was kinda..."

As they kissed, Brendan could feel Steven hardening against his thigh. He sat up and dragged the cover off the bed, and then started to pull Steven's T-shirt off him; he sat up too, and Brendan pulled it over his head and off one arm, but twisted it around the other wrist. He pushed Steven face down onto the mattress, got both arms behind his back, and knotted the T-shirt around his wrists, binding his hands together.

"What you doing, Brendan?"

Brendan trailed a finger down his spine between his shoulder blades and up again, and played with his hair.

"You want me to stop?"

"No."

Brendan took his own cock in his hand. It was hot and tight, and his balls ached dully.

"Good lad."

"Long as you don't do what they done at the end."

Jesus. Brendan wondered what happened at the end of the film: he'd got bored a few minutes in and turned it off. The actor with the moustache couldn't act to save his life – he didn't expect Sir Ian McKellen but they had to act a bit, didn't they, or what was the point? – and the scrawny one, once he got naked, lost any appeal he'd had. Every hair on his body had been waxed away, and he'd looked... well, he hadn't looked right. Steven usually shaved that little triangle of hairs in the middle of his chest, and that was fine if that was what he wanted to do, but there was a soft trail of hairs that began wispily below his belly button and gradually became denser as it reached his dick and surrounded it, and... And if the sight of that – the feel of it – didn't make a man sweat and his pulse quicken, that man might as well admit he didn't have the balls to be fucking another man at all.

"I won't." Whatever it was that happened at the end, Brendan knew he wouldn't do it, not if it wasn't what Steven wanted.

He rolled him onto his back. Steven's cock was bulging in his pyjamas, and when Brendan pulled them down it sprang out, and Brendan laughed.

"Shut up." Steven's cheeks were pink.

Brendan knelt astride him. Steven looked at his swollen dick, and squirmed beneath him.

Steven's tied hands were under the small of his back, making his stomach curve upwards, rising and falling with each heavy breath. Brendan smoothed his hands over the velvety skin of his chest. He felt Steven's nipples with his finger tips. Across each one there was a pinkish graze where a night ago or a few nights ago, Brendan had scratched his thumb nails across them. He did that sometimes, to get an _Ow!_ and a pout and a dark glare through a fringe of eyelashes, and an excuse to kiss away the soreness.

He leaned down and licked one. The graze was slightly textured, almost scabby, and Brendan scraped over it with his teeth, eliciting an _Oi_ from Steven before he moved across to the other nipple, and licked and sucked and kissed it, and then he kissed his mouth, aware of the head of his cock jabbing against Steven's hip. He felt the precum spit out of him. Steven must have felt it on his skin, because he murmured something low in his throat, and Brendan said, "Seems like you're gonna get it now, boy."

He manhandled Steven again so he was on his stomach, then clambered off the bed and fetched the lube from where they kept it out of the sight of the kids at the top of the wardrobe. When he returned to the bed, the soft curve of Steven's backside asked for a slap, and got one, and another when he complained about it.

"I hate you," Steven said.

"I know."

"Bastard."

"Want me to untie you?" Brendan lay down beside him and Steven turned his head to look at him. "Steven? I'll untie you if you want."

"No."

"I'll fuck you if you want."

Steven nodded his head, and mumbled, "Yeah."

Brendan kissed him. Steven snapped at him with his teeth.

"Little bastard. Little whore, ain't you?"

"Fuck off."

"You don't want it, then?"

"I said yes, didn't I?"

Brendan laughed, and pumped a blob of thick lube onto his fingers and spread Steven's cheeks and pushed rapidly into him with two fingers up to the knuckles. He sawed in and out, widening him quickly; Steven swore into the pillow, and Brendan felt him brace as he nudged and then plunged hard into him with his cock.

It was only a few days ago – the night of Steven's birthday, when they'd been out to a restaurant together, a proper date – that with the all-clear from the sexual health clinic, they'd first fucked without a condom. The sensations of it were still new to them both. Brendan imagined the slippery inside of his lover to be blood red, because that was the colour that flooded his head as he was gripped and drawn deeper. Steven was face down and shackled, but Brendan felt exposed and stripped of his power, his body not his own any more.

Steven's obscenities melted into breathed moans of _God!_ and _Brendan!_ His tied hands were clenched into fists, hard against Brendan's belly.

This was no good. It was _so_ good, but it was no good: Brendan wanted to see his face. He withdrew, holding his cock by the root to delay himself, or the tightness of Steven's ring might have milked him into coming as he dragged himself out through it. Steven craned his head around to see why this was happening, the expression on his face so affronted that Brendan gasped out a laugh.

"Brendan," Steven said, "What you doing stopping? I inn't even – "

Brendan flipped him over so he was lying on his back again, and knelt between his legs.

"Ask nicely."

"What? Fuck off, I inn't asking." His eyes shone with expectation, and Brendan knew what he was expecting. He was expecting him to go back in and fuck him to completion – a reasonable expectation, given that neither of them had come yet.

Brendan had other ideas. He moved up Steven's body to kneel astride him, and began to jerk himself off.

"This what you want, is it?"

"Brendan..." Steven's eyes slide down from Brendan's eyes to his cock, and he looked transfixed.

It only took a few seconds more before Brendan finished. His jet of cum spattered onto Steven's face and neck. Steven yelped and screwed his eyes shut; closed his mouth and swallowed what had gone inside.

"Like that, yeah? Filthy little tart."

"I hate you." Steven was writhing in frustration, his cock still stiffly engorged.

"Yeah, so you said." Brendan touched his cheek gently, and wiped a smear of semen off his eyelid with his thumb. "You gonna be good if I untie you?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"I said, didn't I?"

Brendan turned him onto his side and untwined the T-shirt from around his wrists. It was suspiciously easy: could he have freed himself all along? Little bugger. Horny little bugger.

As soon as his hands were free, Steven lay on his back and gazed up at Brendan, frowning.

"Everything okay, Steven?"

"It will be if you suck me off."

Brendan dropped forward to kiss him. Steven held his head and kissed him back, then moved his hands onto Brendan's shoulders and gave him a push southwards.

Brendan growled as he wrapped his fist around Steven's dick and grazed its tip along the roof of his mouth. It was smooth and familiar, and damp where the precum had dribbled. He sucked away the acrid traces, but pulled away as Steven thrust his hips upwards impatiently.

"Do that, and you're on your own." Brendan didn't want to gag: it wasn't a good look.

"Please, Bren, I..."

Brendan relented then. Both hands on him, neck arched to gape his throat, mouth sealed tightly around the head; another growl as he slid his lips down him, and then Steven came, and Brendan swallowed around him and felt him soften in his grip.

Steven's whole body relaxed. Brendan sat up and looked down at him. He looked spent and content.

"You look..."

"What?" Steven's eyes were half closed, his pupils dilated.

_Beautiful. Fragile. Dangerous. Like a man would kill for you or die for you._

"Like a hot mess."

"I dunno what that means."

"Doesn't matter."

Brendan picked up the screwed-up T-shirt and used it to wipe the sweat and cum from Steven's face and neck, and then settled down beside him. He lifted his hand and kissed the fading mark where his wrist had been tied. He felt him shiver, so he reached for the cover and pulled it across them again.

"I love you," Steven said, two years on from the first time he'd said it.

"I love you too. Now, go to sleep, yeah? I need my beauty sleep even if you don't."

"Funny kind of anniversary." Steven flickered a smile. "Most people go on a date."

"Yeah, well, we ain't most people, so."

"You can say that again. Anyway, our real anniversary's December, innit."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Dublin, cos that's when we, you know..."

"Proper couple, yada yada."

"Shut up. Everyone's got to have an anniversary, right, all couples do. And when else is ours gonna be? All the other times are..."

"Fucked up."

"Sort of, yeah. Cos we always split up again after, or..."

"Yeah." Brendan combed his fingers through Steven's dishevelled hair. There couldn't be any more fuck-ups, not this time, not after everything they'd been through to get to where they were now – in this bed, in love, in it till the end.

"So we'll make it December then, Bren, right? Our, like, proper anniversary."

Brendan sighed. Steven wasn't going to let this go.

"Guess so, yeah. Guess that's as proper as we're gonna get, Steven, unless we get married."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No, you said, _unless we_ – "

"Go to sleep, Steven."


End file.
